Because none of this crap is taught (correctly) anywhere.
You see, front-end engineers have long been the bastard children of web engineering in general. This can be largely attributed to Javascript only recently becoming a major player; years ago, Flash developers (and the like) would be paid much higher than someone who worked primarily in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Javascript performance wasn't viewed as competitive enough to warrant actually building anything in it, and the language developed its well known "toy" status.
Coincidentally, this "toy" status is why many server-side engineers won't touch it. That's fine, we'll make you use it server-side eventually, it's just a matter of time. ;)
Also on that note, many server-side engineers can't handle UI at all. That's a blunt statement, yes, but also a true one. Front-end engineers are right at the nexus of computer science and design. You wanna see a true jack of all trades? Check out a really good front-end engineer, and you'll see one.
So back to the original point here... lo and behold it's all completely turned around! Now everyone comes crawling back to us, asking for the proper way, the efficient way, to build interfaces in modern web browsers. Now we're very much expected to solve the same principal computer-science problems in Javascript that were, up until recently, delegated server-side in many cases. This, of course, also requires reversing the general consensus of Javascript as a "toy" language.
So while that illustrates what created the gap, there's still the issue of why the gap isn't filled. With that, I'll start by pointing to my original statement - in the past 3 years alone, there've been an incredible amount of new front-end technologies that no school or institution could ever hope to keep up with and teach reliably.
This is a field where you have to care to learn, and you have to be willing to re-learn everything on a daily basis. You've gotta have that fighting spirit to deal with being the under dog - we're getting there, but salary ranges in general are still way off and people still have clear misconceptions about what the role is worth. Front-end engineers are the type of people who have to be willing to put up with an insane amount of utter crap on a daily basis for people who don't understand the role and generally don't want to properly compensate.
That is why you can't find good front-end engineers.
You see, front-end engineers have long been the bastard children of web engineering in general. This can be largely attributed to Javascript only recently becoming a major player; years ago, Flash developers (and the like) would be paid much higher than someone who worked primarily in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Javascript performance wasn't viewed as competitive enough to warrant actually building anything in it, and the language developed its well known "toy" status.
Coincidentally, this "toy" status is why many server-side engineers won't touch it. That's fine, we'll make you use it server-side eventually, it's just a matter of time. ;)
Also on that note, many server-side engineers can't handle UI at all. That's a blunt statement, yes, but also a true one. Front-end engineers are right at the nexus of computer science and design. You wanna see a true jack of all trades? Check out a really good front-end engineer, and you'll see one.
So back to the original point here... lo and behold it's all completely turned around! Now everyone comes crawling back to us, asking for the proper way, the efficient way, to build interfaces in modern web browsers. Now we're very much expected to solve the same principal computer-science problems in Javascript that were, up until recently, delegated server-side in many cases. This, of course, also requires reversing the general consensus of Javascript as a "toy" language.
So while that illustrates what created the gap, there's still the issue of why the gap isn't filled. With that, I'll start by pointing to my original statement - in the past 3 years alone, there've been an incredible amount of new front-end technologies that no school or institution could ever hope to keep up with and teach reliably.
This is a field where you have to care to learn, and you have to be willing to re-learn everything on a daily basis. You've gotta have that fighting spirit to deal with being the under dog - we're getting there, but salary ranges in general are still way off and people still have clear misconceptions about what the role is worth. Front-end engineers are the type of people who have to be willing to put up with an insane amount of utter crap on a daily basis for people who don't understand the role and generally don't want to properly compensate.
That is why you can't find good front-end engineers.
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